


All Our Times Apart Have Become Our Vows

by nonisland



Category: Girl Genius
Genre: Act 2 Volume 1, Missing Scene, Multi, Polyamory, Pre-OT3, References to Canonical Mind Control, Semi-Epistolary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 16:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3617148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonisland/pseuds/nonisland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The problem with trains was that all the thinking one didn’t have time to do while staking one’s claim or defending one’s city crashed in.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Our Times Apart Have Become Our Vows

**Author's Note:**

> Slots into canon without too much displacement, although assumes the impossibility that there exists a universe (any universe!) in which Agatha might actually get a few moments to herself between Plot and Farce. It would, if such a universe existed, expand out of the middle of [this page’s events](http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20140326) (with a reference back to the beginning of [this one](http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20140321)).
> 
> The extent to which this fic would not have existed without the encouragement, support, and assistance of [**Sour_Idealist**](http://www.archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/) cannot be overstated. Any remaining errors of any sort are entirely my fault.
> 
> Title from Vienna Teng’s “[Flyweight Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBgbB_C9FMg)”.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Should you find something, whilst reading one of my stories, that offends you/is incorrect/could offend others/is in any way problematic, please please _please_ do not hesitate to tell me. I will never spew hate at you, I will never attack you, and I will _always_ thank you for taking the time to let me know.

The train pulled away from the Clankshead station with the whispery growl of truly excellent machinery, a sound Agatha noted with distant approval as she tried and failed to concentrate on her book. Even heterodyning, proof against all outside distractions, didn’t help—the sounds of the train, cleverly-worked refuge that it was, were soothing, and the snow muffled everything beyond that. They moved through a softly-wrapped bubble, just Agatha and Krosp (who had resigned himself to being forcibly removed from the book and had settled in by the window as if he had always intended to be over there, it was much more comfortable than Agatha’s boring old book anyway).

Except she wasn’t just Agatha. Mechanicsburg was in the bubble with them, and Gil and his empire, and the Storm Lords, and the Other, and probably things she didn’t even know about yet. She couldn’t make her own mind be quiet however perfectly she hummed, and with it whirring like an engine about to overload she couldn’t just sit there _reading_.

There were so many things she hadn’t been able to say—bouncing from crisis to crisis by way of hairpin turns and sudden reversals had left her with no time to say anything that mattered, or even to realize that something needed to be said. At least this time she’d had the chance to talk to Lilith and Adam before she left, and she knew she’d left them as well as could be, but…everyone else, all of Mechanicsburg and the people who’d been trapped inside, everyone who’d helped her, everyone who’d waited for her, believed in her, trusted themselves to her.

Gil, who’d left to save her city and take up his own responsibilities, and gotten cracked open and hollowed out along the way. She wondered if he’d gotten her message; if the real Gil, wherever he was in there, had been able to hear it. If she had a way to reach him that wouldn’t take more resources than she had, she’d keep trying, talking all she could in the hopes that some of it would get through to the boy she’d met on the airship city. He was in there, he had to be; if Lucrezia herself couldn’t stamp out Agatha some inadequate substitute surely couldn’t erase Gil. If he were just there with her, if she only had the time to try… But he wasn’t, and she didn’t, and there was too big a risk that she’d give away something in further messages to keep sending them.

And then there was Tarvek. At least she’d gotten to say goodbye to Gil, even though she hadn’t wanted it to be—hadn’t wanted to believe it could be—even this permanent a separation; at least she’d had the chance to send Gil a message afterward, and could hope that he’d received it. Tarvek was frozen, dying if he wasn’t dead already, and right now she had a better chance of getting to Mars than into Mechanicsburg ( _her town!_ ) to him. She’d had no idea—neither of them had had any idea, one minute she’d been promising to dance with him at her coronation party and the next there was another attack, and the _next_ —

“Hey,” Krosp said, loudly enough that Agatha suspected it wasn’t the first time he’d spoken. “Do we have to eat monk food while we’re here?”

“Monk…food?” she asked, struggling to bring her focus back to the train, the bubble of peace, the tracks under them leading clean and crisp to Paris, or on to England if need be, where she’d be able to learn how to break the stasis Mechanicsburg was in (and find a chemist who knew what Tweedle’s poison was and how to make an antidote, find a doctor who would help her with dealing with the knife wound, save Tarvek; and then both of them would save Gil; and then she’d _destroy anyone who tried to hurt any of her people ever again_ ).

“Monk food,” said Krosp, somehow contriving to scrunch up his face. “Boring, _virtuous_ food, probably mostly vegetables—I’m a cat! If they try to feed me vegetables instead of real food I’ll be sick on their—”

Agatha gave him an unimpressed look. “If you’d rather be a hat than come to Paris with me, all you had to do was say so.”

“Not you _too_ ,” Krosp grumbled.

“There’s perfectly normal food for the passengers, anyway,” Agatha said. “We’re hardly in a monastic cell here.”

Anything but. Even the private compartment failed to be truly opulent, in spite of its crimson and giltwork, but it was beautifully, solidly made. The wood planks of the floor lay so closely together that Agatha wasn’t worried about losing a single screw or even a bit of wire; the windowpanes were fitted so neatly into their frames that the wind hummed rather than roared outside. The cloth of curtains and seat-cushions was a nice enough wool, clean, soft, and in good condition. And it was warm, between the well-made windows and the lovely little stove. After waiting at Clankshead, Agatha was in no mood to disregard the importance of warmth.

“You never know,” Krosp said. “Unless they have rats on board I wouldn’t be able to find us dinner if I had to. …Ooh. Do you think they have rats?”

The wasp-eater gave a warning chirp, which Agatha interpreted to mean _Don’t you get any ideas about_ me _, cat_. She squeezed her eyes closed. “No, I do _not_ think they have rats.”

“Do you think they’d swear fealty to me if I got rid of all the rats on the train?” Krosp wondered. “It’s all very well and good having the Heterodyne as my vassal, but you don’t really have very much time for the finer obligations of service.”

“No, Krosp. The monks are not going to swear fealty to you.”

“Hmph,” Krosp said, and curled up on his seat, face buried in his arms. His tail flicked back and forth, just close enough to the stove that Agatha was worried without being close enough for there to be a point to her worry.

She put her book down on the seat next to her and reached for her journal instead. Between Krosp and her own thoughts she’d have no chance at all of getting anything done; she might as well try to clear it all out, stop spinning in the same useless circles.

This was a new journal, picked up from the supplies in the cave, and it was unsettlingly blank under her hands. Agatha hesitated for a moment, then sketched a quick little helper clank on the first page. It felt… _wrong_ to be writing soppy letters, even more wrong without so much as a pretense of using the journal for scientific purposes first.

Right now she wasn’t even sure what to work on, even in pretense. She had a few minor redesigns she’d meant to work on for the Castle to make it less hazardous to innocent bystanders, but she didn’t know what the relevant mechanisms looked like and she couldn’t get to it to investigate. And if she were able to, if she had the core workings of the Castle open in front of her right now, Tarvek would be dead. She was perfectly content not to have any idea how to work with her Castle yet if that was what it took, but that surrender to ignorance still felt like a kind of betrayal, another one, slower and less self-interested than the last time she’d killed the Castle.

The problem with trains was that all the thinking one didn’t have time to do while staking one’s claim or defending one’s city crashed in. Agatha could shove it away when she could _do_ something, but right now there was nothing at all for her to do but sit and think, or look out the windows at the vast still snowscape beyond, or start dismantling the stove to improve it (ooh, maybe—no, she’d better not, the monks might not approve).

An even quicker sketch of the lightning-catcher on the Castle’s roof, then. If she could just figure out a way to automate the resetting she’d never have to worry about the Castle running down if she traveled away, but she didn’t want to figure out how to do it now, this was just a reminder—a promise to herself that she’d go back to being the big bad Heterodyne soon enough, as soon as it would help (or as soon as anyone was watching).

Next page. She glanced up, but Krosp did seem to be asleep. Outside, the snow whirled on, a blur of pearly grey against the darkness. The shushing rhythm of the wheels against the track, the deep bass rumbling of the great engine, the faint whistling of the wind all combined to make something like a lullaby.

It was downright stupid to write this out, whatever language she chose to do it in, but she could always burn it once she had. The stove was right there, after all.

 _Dear Tarvek_ , she wrote. Hesitated, bit the end of her pen and then regretted it. Ick. Well, the stove hadn’t moved; she might as well go on.

> _I forbid you to die._
> 
> _I especially forbid you to die like this, if you do I will bring you back and if anyone says that that makes you forfeit your claim to the Lightning Throne I’ll remind them that your ancestor got it not because of his pedigree but because he was the only one who could stop the Heterodyne from crushing the entirety of Europa and would THEY like to try._
> 
> _Your family is horrible. Not Violetta, obviously, and not you, but I don’t know how either of you made it out as well as you did. I don’t know what it cost you_

—No. She _did_ know what it had cost him, or at least knew enough. She crossed that out, so fiercely her pen tore the page a little.

> _I don’t know how you decided to go up against the Other, who’d devastated Europa, and the Baron, who’d put it back together, for someone with as little practical power as me (or, well, me then), but I’m grateful._

For heaven’s sake.

> _but I’m very grateful._

And _that_ sounded like she was offering to show him her, ahem, gratitude at the first possible moment—which, well, it probably wasn’t like she _wouldn’t_ , exactly, but that wasn’t why! Cheeks blazing, she drew a series of cross-hatching lines through “very” until it was half-dissolved.

> _“Grateful” isn’t an adequate word. I don’t know what I would have done without you._
> 
> _That’s the easy part to say. The hard part_

Agatha glanced up guiltily, but Krosp hadn’t moved except to twist his head even deeper under his arm. If she’d heard anything, it could only have been footsteps far off down the hallway, nowhere near her.

> _The hard part is that I still don’t know what I would have done without you even if it weren’t for all the times you saved my life in the Castle and during the siege. I don’t know how to tell you how scared I was all the times you kept endangering your own life, you absolute idiot, except by screaming at you. I don’t know what I would have been if I came back to Mechanicsburg celebrating the Castle’s rebirth and nobody understood how I felt—how I needed to feel—sending Gil away. I might have just…joined in, forgotten to care. I don’t know. I was thrilled when I came down from the roof—you remember. My family’s not nice either._
> 
> _We’re going to save him, Tarvek. We couldn’t keep him safe but we’ll save him._
> 
> _I wouldn’t say this if I really were writing to you, if I expected you’d read this, but you’re not going to, so I can. ~~Thank you for~~ I know you’ve built up this rivalry between the two of you, or not built it up because it existed long before either of you had ever met me (and someday I  do want to know what happened with that and we will fix it because I know you care about him too), but you_

She looked at Krosp again. Still sleeping. There were no footsteps in the hallway, no sound at the door. Very slowly, shaping each letter one by one as if she were carving them into something much more resistant than paper, she went on.

> _you told me to “give him something to fight for” and I’m grateful for that, too, because I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t told me to. I wanted to but you were right there (and so was Violetta, but that’s different), and I know you thought you were being self-sacrificing but that isn’t it at all. I didn’t want to hurt you. I wouldn’t have kissed you in front of him either, for the same reason._
> 
> _But I’m glad you asked me to, and I’m glad you kissed me when I saved you from that Hive Queen, and I_

Was it possible to spontaneously combust from blushing? It _might_ be. Agatha did not particularly want to find out. She couldn’t, she _really couldn’t_ , put in writing—even if she did burn it immediately after—that, well, that she thought the Castle had suggested the only possible solution.

Carefully, she crossed out the last two words.

> _I’m sorry I didn’t—it’s not goodbye, I refuse to let it be goodbye, but I’m sorry I didn’t give you any kind of proper _au revoir _. I wandered off mid-conversation, and then I got kidnapped and then you got stabbed and I never really thanked you, as I should have done a long time ago, for everything._

She hesitated for a moment longer, eyeing the cat and the door and even the windows warily, and then, quickly, signed it, _Love, Agatha_ and ripped it out of the journal almost in the same move.

She could have thrown it on the fire, as she’d told herself she would, but. Well.

The ink, an unusual blend (probably not a Spark’s formula given how practical it was), was matte and dry already. Agatha folded the letter, again and again until it was nothing but a small block of paper, and tucked it in one of the inner pockets of her tool-jacket.

Krosp was still sleeping. Obviously it was much more difficult than it seemed to do practically nothing except try to boss other people around while wearing a fancy coat and no pants.

Agatha sat back down and looked at the next page of her journal, blank except for one little smudge of ink from where her vehement crossing-out had bled through the pages. She could stop now, maybe _should_ stop now, but she felt unbalanced again, as if instead of evening things out she’d simply moved the unevenness around. She couldn’t write only to Tarvek, however many more things she hadn’t—hadn’t _yet_ said to him.

The second letter was easier.

> _Dear Gil,_
> 
> _At least I’ve already said most of what I need to say to you. It’s not jamming up the inside of my head in quite the same way. I don’t need to worry that you don’t realize how much you matter to me, either—actually, sometimes I’m a little worried that you think you can (or think you have to be?) everything, and that’s just not true._
> 
> _But that’s a discussion I’ll have with you when you’re really here, and when we’ve gotten you fixed. For now, I need you to remember this:_
> 
> _ I know you’re still in there. _

She underlined the whole paragraph twice, then a third time for good measure.

> _I need you to keep fighting whatever your father did to you. But even if you can’t, even if you slip, even if something enormous is at stake when you do_

(—Sturmhalten, and falling away from her own body while she was struggling to tell the world what was happening—the streets of Balen’s Gap, between two armies, and a sudden terrible silence in the air—)

Agatha made herself take a deep breath. It shuddered against the back of her throat, fought her going down to her lungs. The air smelled of winter and hot metal, and the lullaby of the train droned on. Different, blessedly different, from old stone and mountain wildflowers and the distant clamor of rioting. She was somewhere else; she was older, tougher. She’d fought Lucrezia off. She could do it again if she really had to.

> _that doesn’t make you a bad person, or even a not-good-enough person. It means you lost that one time, but it doesn’t mean you stop fighting. And it doesn’t mean you deserved to lose, or that I will ever think any less of you for it_
> 
> _I don’t know if you know what happened to Tarvek, but he’s…well, he’s kind of dying again, and this time I think I’m going to have to get someone else to help me save him. I wish it could be you. I don’t trust anyone else to do it, but right now I can’t trust you either, not the way I need to. The real you, the one who hid me from your father on Castle Wulfenbach and volunteered for the _Si Vales Valeo _to save Tarvek the first time (something else we need to talk about), isn’t… Well. If you slipped and whatever is controlling you came out instead, I’m not sure what would happen but I’d likely end up having to do something drastic and then having to save both of you again._
> 
> _I’m going to save you anyway, of course. Or we are, rather; I can’t do it alone, I don’t know enough about the techniques or the technology, but I’ll help Tarvek save you, as soon as I’ve saved him._

Really, the longer she spent even anywhere _near_ politics, the deeper Agatha’s sympathetic understanding of the Pax Transylvania became. She had the knowledge in her bones by now of the urge to scream at an entire continent to sit down and _behave_.

> _You’re going to be all right, Gil. I know it. I have to believe it, and they say the Heterodynes can warp reality if we try, so you will be. Just hold on until we get there._
> 
> _Love,  
>  Agatha_

She ripped this one out and folded it up too. The paper underneath was smooth, blank; only the ragged edges along the journal’s spine showed that there had once been anything there, and she was a Spark, she was a _Heterodyne_ , anyone seeing that would probably assume they didn’t want to know whatever was missing. It was her work journal, after all; the lost pages could have been anything, most of the possibilities not at all nice.

She tucked the second letter into the same pocket as the first, stretched out her feet towards the fire, and picked up her book again. This time the inside of her head was quieter, more still; she felt, absurdly, both lighter and incredibly tired. Her eyelids drooped as if weighted, and she found herself nodding to the rhythm of the train. Finally she gave up, put the book down again, and curled up in awkward imitation of Krosp to try to steal a nap of her own.


End file.
